I think LOTU should merge with the Church of Reality:

http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/introduction/

http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/faq/

The COR is much more fleshed out than the LOTU, looks compatible with LOTU, and looks as though it is substantially ahead of LOTU in terms of infrastructure.

I think it should as well.  But for different reasons.

Do you think it should in a literal sense?  Or do you think LOTU flies in the face reality?

It's quite simple really.  I don't believe that there is a God.  Note the part of the statement "I don't believe" .

I have the skills, education, reasoning capability, experience and the scientific knowledge to be able to come to that belief based on the way I interpret the available gamut of information and whether or not I choose one theory or another and how it relates to the meagre knowledge that science actually gives us in comparison to the enormity of what's around us.  The scientific community can give me some pretty sharp evidence to go towards proving to me that there is no such thing as a God and by the same token no-one in the religiuos community can prove to me that there is such thing as a God.

However, that is a bit of a conundrum.  Faced with an apparent double negative what is the conclusion?  An average scientist will make postulations and come up with theories that go the direction that they see is best, given the way they interpret the evidence that they have.  However, the really good scientist will not make any conclusions because they will know beyond doubt that some or all of what they've come up with they may well be wrong. So then we have the "best available" information from the scientific community.  Or, in other words what the current belief is.

So then we apply critical thinking and debate.  The result is; I believe this or that, this is most likely to be the case, ah but what about, etc...  So we still don't have a definitive answer that doesn't require any belief or faith to fall into one camp or the other.

So why do I not believe in God.  Well that's up to me.  My decision is good enough for me and I the day I start explaining my reasoning to anyone is the day I have to start telling people that my way is best and become one of those people who want to preach.

So - to answer your question.  You can join together two like minded organisations (or churches, call them what you will) and you end up with one organisation preaching atheism rather than two who both fly in the face of (practical) reality.

Your language is thick, but I think I understand what your saying.

All belief is built on faith.  Built on certain things we take as given without having evidence that they are true.  Such things can include the veracity of what our senses and logic tells, and the inerrancy of the bible.  Since all such things have exactly the same amount of evidence in their favor, namely none, which ones of them you choose to accept as axioms is arbitrary.  All claims therefore are equally valid, so why go about preaching?

For me the answer is I choose, without exceptional cases such as yours with preaching, not to live thinking all claims are equally valid. I choose to believe in what seems plain to me: that functioning senses and logic tell truth, and nothing else does.  For better or for worse, it is seems to be my nature to make these assumptions.  They themselves are not precisely defined, and probably cannot be to my satisfaction.  But it is impossible to live a life where you never make faith based assumptions, and it seems rather arbitrary and unintuitive to me to suddenly decide to cast them off when deciding whether preaching is a good idea.

However, I can respect your point of your view.  I just generally choose to ignore the cited simplifying complication.

And so we define our world by what is what we see to be given fact and logic.  This is a fundamental weakness to arguing a position of high ground against the religions of the world.

It is very unusual to find an individual or group of individuals pushing their point of view without them looking for some kind of gain.

Isn't not having to subscribe to the idea of heaven/hell, karma, retribution, spiritual credit (call it what you may) gain enough?

No, not for these people it isn't!

It is very unusual to find an individual or group of individuals pushing their point of view without them looking for some kind of gain.

True, but that gain is often immaterial, altruistic, and/or harmless.  I have been argueing on the internet for years, but I don't get or look for any fame or fortune from it.  What is it that your preaching against preaching is getting you?

Nothing.  I only preach against preaching to people who preach in a place where I come across it.  Experience has taught me that there are very few people who look for immateriel, alturistic or harmless gain.  It's fine to offer an opinion but don't tell me it's any better than the opinion of someone who doesn't agree with you (I wouldn't accuse you of doing that though).  We all choose to ignore certain things, for certain reasons and a religious person probably chooses to ignore things that I don't and vice versa.  However, to use the LOTU concept of "following the known facts and best available explanations from the scientific world" is, ultimately, as flawed as saying that there is no God. Then using this premise to ask a question "Can Christians be converted to reason?" is either rather arrogant or completely stupid.  Again, I'm not accusing you of that but you did infer that the Church of Reality and the Church of LOTU have much in common.

Otherwise I will generally banter, boast or ridicule about more important things like Cricket or Rugby.  Life, it seems, is too short to get wound up by highbrow debates that have generally meaningless answers.

I fail to see how any claim can supported by the claim that all claims are equally valid.

It's not that simple.  imagine a conversation.

man 1:  There is a God

man 2: No there isn't

man1: Why don't you prove to me there isn't

man2:  No, you prove there is first.

...and so on.

Both claims have validity when they are taken down to providing the last bits of evidence.  We can drone on for hours about how flawed religion is because they follow a shambolic book of stories and have developed ways and means of interpretation over the years.  On the other hand, what we call science has also gone through the same things.  Whoever came up with the idea of Alchemy for example?

No-one can stop people pushing their ideas but if you promote Atheism as a better alternative to Religion you have to have a better story than "Science will reveal all" otherwise you simply sound like a traveller trying to sell the elixir of life.  Whereas a Priest who tells that "God will reveal all" simply sounds like, well, a Priest.

man 1: All claims are equally valid

man 2: No they aren't

man 1: Well... I guess that's valid, ok you win.

Seriously though, if you take claims that directly contradict your own beliefs, and accept them as equally valid to those beliefs, can you really be said to "believe" anything?

Belief implies that you hold claim-set X in higher regard than claim-set Y, and consider it more valid than any other set of claims. If you hold both to be equally valid than it would follow that you have an equal amount of belief in both, which is problematic when they say very different things.

Arthur, your attempting to use logic to direct an arguement to support a conclusion, when the arguement itself denies the superiority of logic over irrationality.

Science relies on faith in logic and senses.  Religion relies on faith in religion.  Science and religion conflict.  I believe in science and not religion.  Religion is a double edged sword which I believe causes more harm than good.  Does that make me want religion to go away?

Yes.

So why shouldn't I use arguements which assume the veracity of logic and senses but not the veracity religion, in order to try to convert people away from harmful belief systems, such as those of Islam and Calvinism?

So now we are back to preaching again.  That lot are a double-edged sword whilst we are the face of calm and reason.  You may well be right, but all you are doing is adding to a conflict that you supposedly don't want in the first place - but you need the conflict to establish who is the Alpha.  One thing that religion or science cannot govern is human nature.  That quest for Alpha status.  Get used to it.   Crackpot organisations such as the Church of Scientology, The Coming of the Christ, Church of LOTU/Reality; or whatever they might called; or whatever they stand for; or whoever "runs" them, are nothing more than equal to each other in their insignificance.

In a certain sense all change is created by conflict.  Change can be good or bad.  Positive and negative change are always constant, concurrent and dynamic.  These two sorts of change are not doomed to cancel one another out.  More people are alive today than have ever died, and a smaller percentage of humanity lives in poverty than ever before.  Modern luxories and rights wrought by science and enlightenment, have achieved what an archaic spectator brought the present could only describe as magic and heresy.  Bonds of slaves have been broken by abolitionists.  Cages of women have been unlocked by feminists.  Monarchs and dictaters have been tumbled by revolutionaries who gave sovereignty to the people and granted tongues to masses.  Cars, buses, chariots, trains, bicycles, dogs, boats, planes, balloons, and shuttles, have reduced travel time and travel expense, and have made destinations available, once unreachable.   Planting, grazing, irrigation, crop rotation, seed migration, domestication, pesticide, fertilizer, and genetic engineering have fed billions.  etc, you are communicating with me on the internet.

Corrupt and/or obselete systems have been replaced by new ones, which, though always imperfect, frequently create a better world.  People have made the world better through what you blanket statement as selfishness and arrogance.  Your view in that sense is more pessimistic than my own, at least if we take a narrow view of selfishness (it isn't saving lives to feel good), but the distinction seems meaningless when juxtaposed with the results.  Don't me wrong, change isn't always good.  I personally think it might kill us soon, though if it doesn't it will give us as a species immortality.  It isn't going away, and I think that even if LOTU becomes as corrupt it will still be change for the better because its tenants are superior to those of religion.  So I support LOTU.

I read your first paragraph Jared, and couldn't help but think that all your points there only/mainly address the developed world, which also happens to be primarily the West.

Humanity as a whole has a loooong way to go yet.

People have made the world better

How would that be then, You can probably reel of a few dozen scintillating things that have been done by humans but there is no way that, when combined with everything that we've done, the world is a better place.  The human headlines are more like: Over-population, stripping the world of it's resources, making it an unsuitable place for the flora and fauna which is essential to our own existence.  I think you need a reality check, not a Church.

it will still be change for the better because its tenants are superior to those of religion

Nitpick: I think that should be "tenets" not "tenants"

While I'm here, our influence on the world hasn't been that awesome... the stuff we've done has improved things for humans, no denying that, but for the planet as a whole we're not exactly the friendliest things to have around.

A very religious friend of mine ,whom I play tennis with,said,when I was rabbiting on about evolution etc;he said "Oh most scientists tell lies ".Well could have knocked me over with a feather.

@spike.  I wouldn't support a general accusation that "most scientists tell lies" but what I would say is that there are a considerable number of scientists who would not be able to practice their profession if it was not funded by government or commercial activity.  Like everyone else, scientists have to pay their bills and the political/commercial spin put on their research results is something that your friend will probably refer to as "lies".

The world is better in the sense that the life of the average person is better, and it is worse in the sense that there are anthropogenic/manmade threats to humanity which could in the end make our present prosperity a bad bargain.  It certainly doesn't help our chances any to have people believing in an afterlife and believing that the end of the world is just around the corner and there is nothing we can do to save the Earth.  The Earth is in danger, which Dent pointed out.  This is precisely why a shift in attitudes is essential, since such a shift is needed for a shift in behaviour.

A casting out of superstition is a step in the right direction.  Churches of LOTU and Reality can pressure humanity to take this step, and such churches can grant some of what is good about religion to atheists in a secular format.  Speaking particularly of potential corruption in secular churches, I think these churches would be more democratic than most theistic churches, oweing to a secular churches inability to use the afterlife as a carrot and stick and the fact that such a churche's tenants would in theory be governed by the scientific method and secular morality.  Hence subjectivity, though present, would be highly exposed, and many "tenets" would lack continuity over time and would lack concensus.

Just to nitpick one thing, the Earth is in no danger. The Earth is in essence a colossal ball of iron and stone... it's not going anywhere in a hurry and there's almost certainly nothing humanity could do at present that would result in it's destruction.

Our own extinction, or the extinction of a large part of the life on Earth we might be able to manage though, so there's still plenty to worry about, it just bugs me when people talk about saving the planet when they mean saving a particular part of the minutely thin layer of biology on the surface of the planet.

Oh, to nitpick one more thing, churche's tenants has a superfluous e, and tenants should be tenets.

Aside from the nitpicks I agree with you that certain religious delusions are certainly doing nothing to help humanity. Not sure that a "secular church" (if that can avoid being a contradiction in terms) will help much either.

As AD is so fond of reminding us, such organisations tend to end up playing the power game for "alpha" status, which doesn't do a lot for the long-term good of humanity. Although... there are a lot of people who are easily led, or feel a need to be led... removing them from the religious followership could help.

As AD is so fond of reminding us, such organisations tend to end up playing the power game for "alpha" status, which doesn't do a lot for the long-term good of humanity.

Hmmmm.  An intersting take on what I've been spouting on about to anyone who will listen.  I would like to stress that you are probably correct in assuming what I am saying as long as you include any organisation who thinks they have the answers, without exception, they all are touting their story to gain alpha status.  While I rate a scientific evaluation above a theological one I wouldn't go so far as to presume that, in absolutely impeachable and 100% provable terms, one is more correct than the other.  It is, at the end of the day just another conclusion based on the available facts that I think makes more sense to the way I think.  Millions, nay, multi-millions can think differently and for the same reason.  One of the biggest failures of a human is that we have the ability to close our minds to the way someone else thinks.  When you do that, you take away some (or a lot) of your ability to learn and understand.

Just to nitpick one thing, the Earth is in no danger.

I would view an Earth without sentient life to view it or live on it, as useless.  As something which doesn't exist in any sense I care about.

Words are not always used precisely, and the sort of use of the word Earth your refering to, is so common that from a utilitarian point of view I see no fault with it.

As AD is so fond of reminding us, such organisations tend to end up playing the power game for "alpha" status, which doesn't do a lot for the long-term good of humanity. 

Arthur has made some rather absolute statements regarding the worth of things I view as more subtle and varied in value: from horrible to excellent.  Preaching is not always bad.

If we were to only care about the world having "sentience" then how would we be entitled to react when a non-sentient being all of a sudden became the dominant life-form.  I use the term "entitled" in the context that we, as humans, are the (current) undisputed alpha...

Or nt even "all of a sudden".  What if it were gradual?

If they weren't sentient than they wouldn't be self-aware.  They would have no conception of past, future, and self.  They would be mindless.  To clarify, lots of animals have sentience.  I have heard that even bees might have sentience.  I personally value humans more than other Earth's other sentient beings because I am human and I rationalize that on average our intellectual lives have greater depth.

The most dominant life-form is already not us.  It is bacteria.  No I don't believe bacterias have rights.

I do know what sentience is thankyou.  Sentience in an individual capacity might not be relevant in more advanced forms of life (whatever they might be) - A kind of "centralised" sentience or something that we, as humans cannot comprehend.  Anyway that, like many assumptions we make about lots of things, is in the realms of imagination but it is no more innacurate than to say that humans have "unparallelled intellect, communication and intelligence".

I thought we'd had the nit-picky discussion over "sentience" before... and come up with the result that sentience = ability to sense the world around you (i.e. a rather common trait in animals) whereas the fancy-sounding word for intelligence is (properly speaking) "sapience".

Who cares.  I only come here because it makes me feel better about my lack of education, intelligence and general ability to think.